Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility
The Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is designed for the destruction of the chemical weapons stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. The facility was completed in 2001. The Army began weapons disposal on September 8, 2004 and completed disposal on October 25, 2011. Destruction is a requirement under the Chemical Weapons Convention and monitored by the OPCW. The facility destroyed 220,604 munitions and containers containing 3,717 tons of GB, HD and VX via high-temperature incineration, representing 100 percent of the base's stockpile. While destroying 50% of its stockpile took six years (until August 2010), the processing of the second 50% was expected to take only two years. The process is simplified by having only ton-containers of HD remaining to be processed while multiple kinds of individual munitions containing several agents were destroyed early in the campaign. An emphasis on risk reduction prioritized destruction of the most modern and dangerous compounds (VX and GB) and destruction of smaller containers, which had greater risk of theft, explosion, and leakage.
Read more about this topic: Umatilla Chemical Depot
Famous quotes containing the words chemical, weapons, destruction and/or facility:
“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)
“Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams—Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian æther, I could, with much more facility and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wit and wisdom.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)